Page 7 - 1912 February - To Dragma

76 TO DRAG MA OF ALPHA 0 MICRON PI

PHOTOGRAPHY

Photography offers a most interesting field of work to women—
especially to college-bred women.

In the last decade women all over the United States and Europe
have entered the professional world as photographers, and to them
largely belongs the credit for artistic portraiture versus the old
stereotyped photography. They have raised the profession from a
mechanical process to a really fine art.

I t is (juite natural that this is so; for the work is primarily a
woman's work—her sense of the artistic; her tact in handling women
and children from whom we draw our largest trade; her patience
in matters of detail both in the studio and dark-room make her
peculiarly adapted to this work.

The ambitious woman who wishes to produce artistic work only,
will not only find that she has use for her college training in the
natural sciences and in psychology, but she will find herself forced
to study the great masters of portrait painting, to have a fair know-
ledge of drawing and composition—and a fund of general infor-
mation for the indispensable small talk that must go on during a
"sitting."

Then, too, a fair knowledge of business methods is most necessary
to the woman who takes up photography as a profession—for here
is the discouraging element of the business—the so-called artistic
temperament is generally sadly deficient in the capacity to make
money. But with the proper business training one can make the
profession remunerative.

At the present writing there are very few trained minds who have
taken up photography;—verv few, comparatively speaking, who have
any knowledge of chemistry or physics^—so few who are truly inter-
ested in human nature—so we must look to the college women for
our successful photographers of the future.

Color photography with its wonderful possibilities, illustrative
photography both invite the women students, but the work that
appeals to most women is child photography.

To have the power to call forth and to record on the photographic
plate the sweet expressions of childhood is indeed a fascinating art.

E T H E L BROWNING CLARKE, Sigma, U . C , ' 0 4 .